The Edtech Podcast with Sophie Bailey.My irreverent interview about all things edtech with Sophie Bailey at BETT 2017.

It’s not easy getting an Explicit Rating on an iTunes podcast for edtech, but I managed to help Sophie Bailey of The Edtech Podcast achieve one when she interviewed me at BETT 2017.

For anyone under 18 or adults who dislike profanity, irreverence and highly-personal comments, stop right here.

I generally don’t give interviews and a good example of why (aside from the podcast) could have been found in the video of the BETT 2015 panel with George Burgess (Gojimo) and Oula Akiki (ex- Director of Education at BUSU). Sponsored by Pearson, it was rather ‘ripe’, and poor old Kelwn Looi, sensibly decided (he has a serious job) to lose it during editing.

It’s easy to adopt a public persona in interviews and speeches, a sin of which I am undoubtedly guilty, but I think these performances still have far more value than the stage-managed keynotes at conferences like BETT, ISTE, GSV/ASU etc, or found on TED.

The feature picture is of my Grade 6 class at Wangaratta West Primary School, where my long-dead teacher, Mr Sherman saved my education and showed me just how important great educators really are. He was strictly old-school, but I suspect that as an ex-WWII soldier he wouldn’t really mind my swearing too much. I often wonder what became of the rest of my class as I haven’t seen or heard of any of them in almost 40 years (about the only story Sophie Bailey didn’t manage to extract).

It’s now time to slip back into the shadows of mediocrity and let others, who have more important things to say, take the stage.

The picture is of the Austin Motel where I stayed during SXSWedu 2012. Rumour has it The Clash also stayed there when they played the Austin Coliseum in 1982 and so it seemed appropriately inappropriate.